The news regarding Gabriel Jesus is about as bad as any of had feared: he's undergone surgery to repair damage to his meniscus and MCL. At least it's not his ACL. At any rate, he'll be out for about 12 weeks, missing 11 Prem matches. In his absence, many of us are casting about like blind men in a room with the lights off. Whom should we sign? Depay on loan, Gakpo at any price, Locatelli because Juve are in dire straits? Some of the less-stable among us are keen on bringing in Ronaldo, as if he'd swallow his pride to play for whatever pittance we'd pay him ("this weekly cheque has just one comma? What's the deal, Edu?")
To those who for some reason covet Cristian, look no further than the Ronaldo-free Portgual's 6-1 demolition of Switzerland. His replacement, 21-year-old Gonçalo Ramos had a hat-trick and added an assist in what was originally a toss-up but that turned into a massacre. Portugal's manager Fernando Santos explained:
We wanted a team that played with a lot of fluidity. Cristiano is more fixed, he stays in a more determined role towards the box. Gonçalo has different characteristics: he is very dynamic and that’s what he ended up showing us.
If that's not damning by faint praise, I don't know what is. To say Ronaldo is "more fixed" is the kind of praise late-stage Mertesacker or Gerrard might aspire to. It's a euphemism for "immobile". Freed of the black hole that Ronaldo has become in the dwindling twilight of his career, this youthful Portugal were rampant, fluid, confident, dynamic, and Switzerland had no answers.
That should curdle some Gooner blood.
For one, Man U are now free of that black hole of an albatross of a white elephant (pity that Coleridge hadn't deigned to mention the albatross's colour). The considerable attacking and pressing talent that Ten Hag has in Rashford, Sancho, Fernandes, Eriksen, and Antony, among others, is now freed from the shackles of Ronaldo's still-considerable talent but also of his even-weightier ego and drag on tactics. None of these players will have to defer to or cater to him anymore. They will each be free to express themselves, much as Portugal were on Tuesday.
LIke a black hole, Ronaldo has an event-horizon, a boundary beyond which an entity cannot affect anything else beyond that boundary. Piers Morgan of all people did us the favor of exposing Ronaldo's event-horizon as it pertained to Man U. It was in short order that they parted ways with the man by way of that ever-convenient "mutual consent".
Santos showed that this kind of cold-eyed calculation can extend beyond the financial ties to the familial. By his own admission, he has known Ronaldo since the player's days back at Sporting...way back in 2003.
It's with all of this in mind that those among us who might pine for the panache of the Portuguese player should take pause. Imposing him on our young, vibrant squad—even for as nervous as we are given Jesus's prolonged absence—would be foolish and countrerproductive. He's a drag on a squad, a pox on a manager, a headache and a half who would cost an arm and a leg. To those pointing to his individual achievements a season ago, when he scored 24 goals across all competitions in what appeared to be a gilt-edged season in which he flirted with winning the Golden Boot, consider this: in the season prior to his return, Man U scored 116 goals across all competions, finished second in the Prem and narrowly lost the Europa League final. In Ronaldo's first season, the squad scored just 67 goals (a drop of 46) finished sixth in the Prem, and didn't get past the Champions League knockout stage.
Ronaldo is now a full season removed from having tanked Man U's season. His only offer at this point is to join Saudi Arabia's Al-Nassr FC. No legitimate, competitive club wants him. Why is that so many of our fans still do?
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